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The relations between fathers and their children are often a rather complicated matter and the reason for childrens resentment towards fathers. In the poem Those Winter Sundays , Robert Hayden addresses this theme by means of expressing his complex feelings about his father through the use of a special tone. In the following paper, the ways in which Hayden uses tone and to what purpose will be discussed. Overall, after the analysis of the poem, a conclusion can be made that the poets tone in it is characterized by a shift of mood from sadness and regrets of childhood to understanding his fathers fight and respect towards him in his adulthood.
The tendency to have a sad tone by the poems speaker is evident even from the title of this piece as it features the word winter that impels cold, dark, and gloomy thoughts. Also, the poet uses the word those , which suggests a picture from the past that repeated many times, and created a special image in the heart of the speaker. Finally, the word Sundays also implicates something important for the poems narrator. As a reader starts looking through the first lines of Those Winter Sundays , one may realize that it speaks about memories from childhood. Children usually value Sundays as the most important days in the week because on that days the whole family gathers and spends time together. However, Hayden combines such a positive and meaningful word with those and winter , which also gives a strong reason to believe that he is not going to speak about something inspiring and exciting in this piece. Thus, even before the beginning of the first line, the reader may see his negative tone aiming to describe the boys cold and distant relations with his father (Gallagher 245). Below, the body of the poem will be addressed to prove that its title produces a justified impression.
In the five opening sentences, that form the first stanza, the reader will not notice any rhyme. Here, the use of prosaic speech is a special method to support a negative tone by Hayden. In the opening line Sundays too my father got up early , the poet introduces his father by saying that even on Sundays he started his working schedule early (Hayden para. 1). This line shows that the narrator is not happy about his parents way of living as he says too and calls him father , but not Daddy or Papa. This is a hint showing that the father was a man of a pedant character, and roused cold and formal emotions in his sons heart. The speaker also says: with cracked hands that ached from labor . This adds details about the fathers character and personality, depicting him as a hard worker, a man of minor income, and a blue-collar (Hayden para. 3). Thus, a rather negative picture of the fathers character and his main concerns and interests in his work is formed in the minds of readers from the very first lines of the poem.
The next stanza only adds to the sadness of the narrators tone:
Id wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
the rooms were warm, hed call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic anger of that house (Hayden para. 6-9).
In this stanza, the readers may feel the atmosphere in the speakers house through the use of such words and expressions as the cold splintering, breaking , fearing , the chronic anger of that house . These words show that the fathers efforts to get up early to care for his family members do not result in a positive outcome as the atmosphere is still chilly and full of anger and pain.
In the final stanza, the sadness of the speakers tone is still observed in the words speaking indifferently and cold , but the two final lines What did I know, what did I know of loves austere and lonely offices? show a shift in the mood and tone (Hayden para. 10-14). This means that when the narrator becomes an adult, he comes to realize his fathers struggles and starts viewing him in a different light.
In conclusion, in his expressive poem Those Winter Sundays , Robert Hayden speaks about the issues that are often rife in fathers-sons relations. His tone is mostly negative, sad, and regrettable through the whole narration, but in the final lines, it shifts to a positive one, which suggests that the speaker changes his idea of his father when he becomes an adult.
References
Gallagher, Ann. Haydens Those Winter Sundays. Explicator 51.4 (1993): 245-247. Print.
Hayden, Robert. Those Winter Sundays. 1985. Web.
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